first of all, what the nsa is doing is collecting metadata. what the newspapers have not told you is the metadata is constitutionally unprotected. it is third party information. it does not belong to you. it belongs to the telephone companies and telephone companies can do anything they want with it, except give it to a federal officer without being compelled to do so. that's one thing. i will say that when i argued for the creation of that statute, article ii 15 of the patriot act, when i argued for that one, i never anticipated and i don't think anybody ever anticipated it would be used as it is being used today. because we've looked at as being something that would target a single person for something. and so that is another thing that's happening. but if you take the program and working backwards a bit to 9/11, if we had had the opportunity at 9/11 to collate telephone messages, public addresses and frequent flyer numbers, none of which is constitutionally protected, we would have had the possibility of discovering all 19 hijackers in the